Shannon makes the point: the space is full, every night. But we don't
have much money coming in. People should be paying their dues.

Jof: there's not much incentive to become a member other than joy of

supporting a thing. What is the incentive?

Shannon: "shame!"

( At this point an open floor discussion commenced, with many ideas some

of them very good. I am sure I missed some; my apologies. Replies
are sometimes included in square brackets. )

Frantisek: has discussed money with many people: Why do we not have new

members coming in, and why do we not have donations coming in?
Conclusion: people (the core) are not happy, are becoming detached.
Frantisek tried to develop more social connection, for example with
food; that didn't work out as well as he had hoped.

Jake: Relates his previous experience, with another space that was open

to people coming in off the street. He found that people tended to
come in and take advantage of the space, but remain anonymous (not
become engaged in the community). He found that a "census" worked
well to help keep track of people. Their implementation was a
simple notebook in the space; anyone interested can take a census at
any time, just walk around and ask people "a few simple questions":
"What's your name?" "How many times have you been here in the last
month?" "Would you like to continue coming here?" He made
suggestions for defusing hostile encounters and intransigence.

Al suggested a few ideas: He'd like to find a car and someone with a

Costco membership so that he can restock sodas. Al also stated that
he wants a locking, clear, box for donations at the space; he is
pretty sure that cash has disappeared from the donation bin, and
that a significant number of people don't donate because they think
donations are insecure.

Patrick: thinks problem is, no official announcement or bulletin board

for people coming into the space. Suggests a weekly printed
calendar with notifications to people. Specifically finds the wiki
hard to find information on.

Kelly: A subset of our populace -- people who are here a lot -- get

indoctrinated in "how we do things"; but a lot of people aren't
interfacing with that culture and don't get indoctrinated.
Remembers when she was doing "new people indoctrination" after the
meetings. Would like to see more people step up to help introduce
newbies to the Noisebridge way.

Frantisek: suggests his homebrew as a fundraiser; it's cheaper than

soda and mostly organic. also suggests outreach, bringing new
people in.

John: suggests guestbook like at hackerdojo -- people should sign in

when they come in, using an alias or pseudonym if they prefer. He'd
also like to solicit donations from people who come to events. He
also suggests a new event -- a "Fix your PC" night.

Al: suggests a front desk, a place for a scheduled volunteer to sit and

interact with people, request donations, etc.

Jay: new here, no background. Not likely to be a hanger-on, but here

for one day. Says it would be great to have an explicit suggestion
at the door, "suggested donation for day use $X", plus a clear way
to make the donation. We asked "how would you feel about a sign
that said "suggested donation $5"? and he responded "I'd think
'whew, I was considering giving $10 or $20'."

Kelly: affiliate donation is too low; suggests benevolent sponsor at

$40 for person who wants to be a supporter but not be closely
affiliated or involved in governance.

Carl: asked what the actual run rate numbers are. Rather than letting

Kelly answer precisely, we all barged in and said "about $5k per
month". Carl then asked about income; we estimated "about $3k
coming in".

Patrick: is there a link to paypal on the site? (yes)

do the usergroups pay? (no). we should get the user groups to pay.
even just $5 per person for a 20 person member group is $100.

Jof: do we need to encourage members to pay? or do we need to induct

new members? (we need to get members to pay, but also to get new
members.)

Kelly: re user groups, tries not to raise it, but finds it really

annoying that regular groups hosted here don't interface with the
membership AT ALL. Thinks that we need to outreach to those groups.
suggests a regular volunteer group show up for the next month to
conduct a census of what groups are *actually* using Noisebridge.

interest to have people donate money at an event such as "fix my
computer day"

Kelly: The theme of being treasurer: lots of work, awful

recordkeeping. perhaps we could nominate a new secretary who's not
burned out.

Jay: actually, the day costs more like $165, not $137. Shannon made a

arithmetic error.

( oops. The day-sponsors agreed (I think) to raise their amounts. )

Meredith: sewing area is one of the most busy areas at noisebridge.

wants to raise funds for sewing area specifically. wants to have a
few sewing days to get people introduced to the sewing area and get
people involved. people who are interested in helping should
contact her.

Steve suggests a light in the space, that turns red as we are going into

the red. kelly wants a data pipe out of our accounting website.
frantisek wants to display the number of members who've paid and
haven't paid.

John: how about putting a speaker at the door, to play a recording

saying "please donate; it costs $XXX to run this space"

Laura: if people don't pay their dues, do they lose membership? (no, we

haven't been giving members nag feedback since mitch was doing it,
long ago. Soon Kelly will implement her scheme: a single friendly
nagging email "pay your dues", then after another week, go on hiatus
list until dues are paid. ) Should we terminate members when they
don't pay? ( Kelly thinks it'd be good to terminate people who
don't pay, but doesn't think that's the consensus. ) Grey points
out that process for getting off hiatus is unclear.

Jay: getting money from people, we should get money from people however

much we can.

Jof: we could use the signs, the one that's been running life could say

something useful, like "here's how much we need to get this month"
and "here's how many members have paid dues"

Finally we were done discussing money pains and plans. A few other
discussion items came up:

bikes: There are a lot of bikes that have been around for a long time,
taking up space on the bike parking. Andy and Shannon masking-taped
them all to the wall; if the masking tape is unbroken in a week, they'll
go away (to the Bike Kitchen).

skylights: need to be plasticked for winterizing. Andy will order
plastic. Costs about $80, donations towards cost (to Andy directly)
appreciated. Plasticking party after it arrives.

We had one candidate for membership, John (present); he asked to wait
until next week.